“A sextant?”
“Sí, a sextant. When my father returned, he was happy because the Germans had paid him handsomely for his work. A week or so later, Presidente Camacho declared war. I remember my father being very upset. He knew war meant he would do no more translating for the Germans. On the last day, I went with him to the ship. The big cranes on the ship were removing boxes from the hold and placing them in the back of a truck. My father was to guide an officer and a sailor in the truck to the hiding location he had found earlier.”
“What kind of boxes?” I asked.
Guzman shrugged. “Wood. Not big, but heavy. I tried to lift one and couldn’t.”
Gold was my immediate assumption. The thought quickened my pulse like a shot of adrenalin. But then I knew enough about boats and ships to know they often carried rocks or lead bars as ballast. The boxes could have simply held lead ingots.
“Go on.”
“I wanted to go with my father, but he told me to go home. I pretended to, but when father and the two Germans were in the cab of the truck, I secreted myself among the boxes in the back. They never saw me, not even when they reached their destination. I jumped off the truck and hid before father and the Germans got out of the cab.
“It was a hard day’s work. The heat was bad and the boxes were heavy. But one by one, they unloaded each box and carried it down the sea bluff to a cave. Then they carried what looked like dynamite into the cave. The sun was setting when they finished. I remember watching my father come out of the cave, brushing dirt from his hands and clothes, then looking up and smiling at the Germans, happy to be finished with the work. Then the German officer removed his pistol from its holster, and shot my father in the face.
“I wanted to scream, but I could not move or utter a sound, I was so afraid. The Germans dragged my father’s body into the cave. Then I heard another shot. A few moments later, the German officer ran from the cave and dashed up the hill and hid behind the truck. The cave roared with an explosion, and its mouth filled up with rocks and debris. The German officer smiled and laughed. I remember that—the way he laughed. Then he climbed into the truck and drove off to the northwest.”
Guzman finished his beer, then dabbed his eyes again.
“I started walking back to our village,” he said. “I was crying so hard, I could not see the road I was walking on. I was thirsty. My lips cracked, my head spun. Maybe two days later, some fishermen found me collapsed by the seashore. I tried to drink ocean water and it made me sicker. This is what I was told. I don’t remember. It was a week before I got home to my mother and was able to tell her what happened to father. She told me never to speak of it again. That was when I learned of the great battle.”
“What great battle?”
Guzman nodded. “The Battle of the Muelle, as it is known here in La Playa de Cortés. After we left in the truck, our soldiers came to the muelle. They were to arrest the Germans and seize the ship, but—”
“But?”
“The ship was not what it appeared to be,” Guzman said. “It was disguised as a ship of commerce, but it was a ship of war with many hidden guns. The ship fired on our soldiers, killing most of them, then sailed away.”
“Do you know where to?” I asked.
Guzman shrugged and shook his head. “But I was told that before they fired on our soldiers, the Germans replaced the Swedish flag with the Nazi flag.”
I mulled that over. The Battle of the Muelle might be nothing more than local lore, but as I told Jo, in Mexico legends often contain some truth. And a heavily armed merchant ship matched the description of the Danzig.
“You said you were told this, right?”
Guzman nodded.
“Is there any hard evidence of this battle?”
Guzman nodded again. “In my shop,” he said. “I can show you.”
He stood and glanced at the money on the table. I pushed it toward him.
“Please, for your trouble,” I said.
“Gracias, señor.” Guzman stuffed the bills into a shirt pocket. “Vamonos.”
We left the bar and Guzman led me next door to his shop. A middle-aged woman as big-figured as Guzman himself busied herself with a customer, barely registering our entrance. Guzman nodded toward the woman and said, “Mi mujer”—“My wife”—then led me into a back room. He pulled a small cardboard box down from a shelf, removed the cover, and handed it to me. Inside were several spent bullets that I guessed were .30 caliber in size, some bent or mushroomed, others relatively undamaged, but all tarnished with age. Along with the bullets were pieces of jagged metal I recognized as shrapnel.
“You found these at the muelle?”
“Sí, they were scattered all along the shore. Many more are still there. They are German.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because our soldiers were shooting out toward the bay. Their bullets would not be on the land.”
I couldn’t argue with Guzman’s logic and said so. Then I asked, “Can you take me to the muelle so I can see, too? And the sea cave?”
Guzman stiffened and shook his head. “No, I cannot, señor.”
“I’ll pay you well,” I said.
“But, señor, the muelle is still in use,” Guzman said. He glanced around the room, then leaned closer to me and said sotto voce, “The narcos.”
I shook the box of bullets. “But you’ve gone there before.”
“Sí, sí,” he said. “But—”
I took more greenbacks from my money clip and laid them on the shelf. Guzman eyed them nervously, still shaking his head. I laid more bills on top of the first, and the head shaking slowed.
“To the muelle and the sea cave,” I said.
Guzman took the bills and counted them with the sharp eye of a storekeeper. He glanced at around the room once more, then stuffed the money in his pocket.
“Muy bien,” he said. “You have an automobile?”
“A Land Rover,” I said.
“Bien,” he said. “We will need it. Meet me here mañana. We leave at five in the morning. Fewer eyes awake to see us leave.”
CHAPTER 21
IT WAS STILL DARK when we set out from La Playa de Cortés. The Land Rover’s headlights bore through the darkness, but there was little to see once we were outside of town. Guzman had brought along a thermos of Café de Olla—strong dark coffee sweetened with piloncillo, cinnamon, and orange peel—and some frijoles wrapped in tortillas for our breakfast. We ate in silence. When we finished, Guzman shattered the quiet with a loud, contented belch.
“Pardóname,” he said.
“So, Manuel,” I said, “did you ever consider those boxes your father helped hide might be filled with something valuable?”
“You mean like gold?” he answered. I nodded. “Sí, from the beginning. I was a child and, until my father was murdered, I pretended we were on a pirate adventure—we were off to bury stolen treasure. Because of that, I assumed the boxes held gold or some other treasure. Now, as an old man, I am certain of it.”
“Why is that?”
He gave me a side-long glance. “Because you are not the first gringo—excuse me, my apologies again”
“De nada,” I said.
“You are not the first Yanqui to come asking questions about the German ship.”
I didn’t exactly slam on the brakes, but I slowed down enough to look at Guzman. He was leaning back in his seat, his hands folded over his paunch, grinning at me.
“Somebody else asked about the German ship?”
“Sí.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?”
“You did not ask me, Pedro.” He grinned again.
“Who was it?” I asked, though I was pretty certain who it was.
Guzman shrugged. “I did not speak to him,” he said. “He was not like you—agreeable and…” He patted his pocket holding the money I paid him. “Generous.”
“Then how do you know he was asking about the German ship?”
“I overheard him asking,” he said. “I was in the cantina when he came asking, like you did, but not so nicely. He dressed in very fine clothes—not a suit, but the same clothing the narco capos wear. Expensive. And he did not enjoy dealing with Mexicans. When he spoke to Jorge, the barman, he did so with obvious distaste. I do not think he would like anyone with skin darker than his. He asked about the German ship and Jorge glanced at me. I shook my head to tell him I did not want to talk to the man, then I left.”
“That was the last time you saw him?”
Guzman shook his head. “The next day he drove out of town in a truck with two other Yanquis. They were hard to forget. They both wore black military pants—the type with the baggy pockets on the legs—and black T-shirts. And they wore no hair.” Guzman pointed to his head.
“Skinheads?”
“I do not know,” Guzman said with a heavy shrug. “One had a swastika tattoo on the back of his neck. The other had a zig-zag tattoo on his arm here.” He tapped his left forearm. “Two of them, side-by-side.”
“Skinheads.” I said. “The second tattoo was SS lightning bolts.”
“If you say,” Guzman said. He pointed at a spot in the road. “Slow down. You will turn to the left up there.”
I turned the Land Rover onto an unpaved road. Repeated assaults by tires and heavy rains left it rutted and potholed, and the rain forest closed over it like a tunnel. I slowed and slipped the Land Rover into four-wheel-drive.
“The man in the expensive clothes,” I said, “what did he look like?”
“He was tall, pale skinned, with black hair,” Guzman said. “He had well-groomed fingernails. I do not think was a hard worker.”
The description matched Frank Crane right down to the manicured nails.
“And you never saw him again?”
“Never.”
“He didn’t come back to the village, to La Playa de Cortés?”
“No,” he said. “Three Yanquis like that would be easily noticed.”
“Have you never thought of opening the cave to see if there was gold there?” I asked.
“No, never.” Guzman said.
“Why not?”
Guzman sighed and raised his hands in a sign of futility.
“I am a humble man of humble means,” he said. “If I were to suddenly come into wealth, the government would take it away. Or, worse, the narcos would kidnap me, take the gold, and kill me. Maybe torture me first. Better to remain a humble man and alive.”
We drove in silence after that, not because we had nothing to say, but because dust clouds stirred up by the Land Rover made talking difficult. After the better part of an hour, Guzman tapped my shoulder and urged me to slow down.
“If you do not slow down, Pedro, you will drive us into the bay.”
I applied the brakes just as the mangrove forest opened into a large clearing, swung the wheel to the right toward where the dirt road turned north, and skidded to a stop. To my left was the bay, and where the land ended was a concrete quay large enough to dock a ship.
“El muelle,” Guzman said.
I climbed out of the Land Rover and walked across the quay to where four large wooden pilings stood at the edge of the concrete. Tires dangled from each piling to act as fenders. They were old and worn, but not old enough to be from the 1940s. Pockmarks marred the surface of the quay, but whether bullets made them or just the ordinary wear and tear of a dock I couldn’t tell. On the other hand, the damage to the landward side of the wooden pilings was obviously from gunfire, and the weathering of the jagged holes showed the injuries were decades old.
I walked back up the quay to where Guzman stood looking up at the trunk of a tree. He had picked up a stick and was using it to point at three holes in the trunk.
“See?” he said. “Bullets.”
I glanced around and spotted similar damage to other trees surrounding the quay.
“You’re right, Manuel,” I said. “And you’re right about the soldiers’ gunfire being aimed toward the bay. You can see the bullet damage on the pilings.”
“Sí,” Guzman said. “Follow me.”
He walked me toward the tree line where the mangroves ended, and he started rutting around the vegetation. I followed his lead, and in a matter of minutes we had recovered several spent bullets like the ones Guzman had shown me the day before. We also found pieces of shrapnel and what appeared to be part of a shattered human skull.
“From one of our soldiers,” Guzman said, tapping the bone with his stick.
I nodded and started to say something, but Guzman hushed me. He stared up the dirt road, cocking his ear like a dog.
“We must go,” he said.
“What is it, Manuel?”
He gestured toward the trail. Dust clouds hovered above the forest ceiling. Then I heard the distant rumble of motors. Several of them.
“Narcos,” Guzman said. “Contrabandistas. Vamonos, pronto!”
CHAPTER 22
“NOT TOO FAST, AMIGO,” Guzman warned as I drove up the north leg of the dirt road. “We do not want to make the dust clouds. The narcos will see them.”
I kept the Land Rover in second gear as the road narrowed and bent inland toward the main highway. After a few minutes, the road became little more than an animal trail. Low-hanging branches whipped the windshield and flung themselves through the open windows to lash at our faces. As the trail ascended, tires squealed with lost traction, caught, then hurled us forward only to lose traction again. The Land Rover fishtailed as it climbed, and I worried more that it would slip backward or even roll than about the amount dust we might be making. After twenty minutes of the grueling ascent, we reached the highway.
Guzman guided me to a turnout overlooking the bay. To the south, we could see where the mangrove forest was cut away from the shore to make room for the quay. I reached into the backseat for my camera bag, removed a 35mm single-reflex camera and attached a telephoto lens. It was as good as a telescope. Six vehicles were parked beside the muelle, five four-bys and a large truck. Maybe a dozen men, some armed with automatic rifles, spread out along the embankment, taking up security positions.
I handed the camera to Guzman, and he studied the activity below us.
“There must be a ship coming in tonight,” he said, handing the camera back to me. “They always come in at night and leave before daybreak to avoid being seen by the fisherman. The fishing boats are back from their day’s work at sunset and don’t go out again until morning. Narcos secure the muelle to make sure no one stumbles upon it before the ship arrives. The truck must be filled with the contraband.”
“What do you think it is?” I asked.
Guzman raised his heavy shoulders and let them drop.
“Who knows?” he said. “Better not to mind the business of the narcos.”
“Marijuana?” I asked. Guzman shrugged. “Cocaine?” He shrugged again.
My mind was racing with possibilities for a freelance story on the local cartel and its operations.
“What kind of ships?” I asked. “Small cargo ships or big yachts?”
“That is not my business to know,” Guzman said.
I figured the cargo was cocaine. Coke gained popularity in the U.S. in the 1970s, but the country’s hunger for it exploded in the 1980s due, in part, to U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra guerillas who used funds from Ronald Reagan’s illegal arms sales to Iran to subsidize their trafficking in crack cocaine. Revelation of the Contras’ drug trade, and Reagan’s involvement in that and the arms deal, nearly toppled the administration. I knew several of the reporters who broke the story about the Contras’ drug dealings, and at least one of them died under mysterious circumstances. That memory tossed a bucket of ice water on my enthusiasm for a story on the narcos. I’d already survived enough close calls.
“Let us go now, Pedro. We have a long drive.”
It was nearly noon by the time we reached the area where Guzman said his father had guided the Germans. I slung my camera bag over my
shoulder, removed a handheld GPS device from it, and checked the latitude and longitude. It nearly matched the coordinates Jo found with Crane’s gold bar. From the road, Guzman led me more than two hundred yards down a sea bluff. He halted and stared at a gaping hole in the cliff.
The mouth of the cave was just tall enough for a man of medium height to walk through without stooping too much. To either side of its mouth were piles of rocks and other debris. The lack of sea erosion showed the heaps were new.
“That man and his skinheads, as you call them, must have been here,” Guzman said, waving at the debris. “This was not here before.”
“You’re sure?” I said, though I didn’t doubt it.
“Sí,” Guzman said. “I come here once a year to pay respects to my father. This was not here before. The cave has always been sealed.”
I dug a flashlight out of my bag, slapped Guzman on the shoulder, and led him into the cave.
Bodies don’t last long in the rain forest. They last even less time near the sea. The click-click-click of hard-shell claws drew my attention to the corpses even before I smelled the lingering miasma of decay. Dozens of red land crabs scuttled across the cave floor, picking at the last remaining flesh of two skeletons. Shreds of black fabric clothed what was left of the bodies. The feet still wore black leather boots from which the smallest crabs scurried with the last vestiges of their feast.
“Mío dios,” Guzman muttered, crossing himself.
“I think we found your skinheads,” I said.
“Sí,” Guzman said and crossed himself again.
I turned the light on the rest of the cave. Fresh boot prints scuffed the dirt floor, but there was no treasure trove of heavily laden boxes.
The Fourth Rising (Peter Brandt Thrillers Book 3) Page 11
